Who is Steven Cerri?

 In many ways, the story of my engineering/scientific/business career is typical and in many other ways not at all typical.

I grew up building rockets… and that was in the 8^th grade. I went on to become an aeronautical engineer working on the shuttle and on satellites.

I noticed right away that I wasn’t too happy with my managers. They didn’t seem to understand how to motivate people, and especially me.

I wasn’t satisfied doing only my space vehicle flight performance work and what made me question my direction was that I saw people around me who were doing the same thing in their later careers as they did when they first started and I just didn’t feel that was for me.

 

 It wasn't quite enough!

So with the help of an itchy intellect and some poor managers I decided to branch out. I got a Masters Degree in geophysics. I thought I would work on earth resources from space and I did that for a while. Doing research in the ocean and proving ground-truth from space about possible earth resources was cool. But…

Then I went back to aerospace and worked once again on space vehicles but this time on deep space probes and weather satellites. And I was working for some very good managers and leaders. These managers and leaders became my mentors and coaches. They taught me that my interpretation of bad and good management and leadership practices was spot on!

 

After a few years at this, my curiosity got the better of me and four of us left our current company and started a software and systems integration company. The four of us had left a large space corporation and now we had a start-up by the tail.

 

One more degree

After two degrees, my itchy intellect took hold again and I received an MBA. And by this time I had progressed from engineer to vice president of engineering and ultimately I would become general manager of a division of what was no longer a start-up but a thriving company.

Then… well you know what happened next… I left to start another start-up, a commercial printer company. A small core group of us grew it into, what ultimately became, a large public company, half-billion dollar company.

 

Now to a start-up

During this ride (and the ride continues to this day) I learned not only about technology management and leadership, but about human communication, training, personal and professional growth and development, about motivation, and about helping people that no one else wants to have on their team into star performers on my team.

The interesting thing was that I had to learn much of this on my own, because the typical management, leadership, communication, and motivational training seemed to be completely off.

It seemed to me that the people who were teaching technology management and leadership had never been a manager or leader in a technical organization. And those people who were teaching communication and motivation never had to communicate with engineers, scientists, and technologists.

And the proof was in the results. I was often called upon to turn troubled projects around. And I was successful.

I often volunteered to take, into my teams, engineers, scientists, and technologists no one else wanted on their team. And I was successful in helping these people shine.

 

My management and leadership styles...

My management style was often counter to the conventional wisdom. And to this day, the people I coach and mentor and train see significant and career changing results and they call what I teach them, “unconventional wisdom”.

About 18 years ago I started my company STCerri International and Steven Cerri Training.

I have been traveling around the country and sometimes around the world, training engineers, scientists, and technologists in what I have learned, and I still do that.

However, I want to reach more people, and so I’m putting my information, my knowledge, my training, and my coaching and mentoring on these websites:

 www.stevencerritraining.com    This is the main portal through which you can reach all the others, but you can also reach the others through their own URLs.

www.engineertoleader.com    A specifically designed membership site to help engineers, scientists, and technologists transition from being solely technical to being able to contribute fully their knowledge and expertise to the organization.

www.stevencerricoaching.com    Here you will find one-to-one coaching and mentoring to meet your needs and your schedule.

www.stevencerri.com    Where you will find information where I still travel around the country conducting on-site training.

There you have it!

 

One more thing

But there is one more point. You have probably noticed that my career is not a straight line. I was certain and sometimes I’m still certain that my career would have gone and will still go in a straight line… where I intend it to go.

However, I have learned, and I bring this up for your consideration, your career will probably not go as you planned initially. My guess is that at various points in your career you will pause and wonder: “How did I ever get here?” Even though every decision you made along the way seemed absolutely like the one you should and wanted to make based on where you where at that moment and where you thought you would end up.

As the saying goes: “What got you here won’t get you there”. And very often where you “get to” is not where you thought you were going to “get to”.

Being able to answer the question “How did I every get here?” is much, much less important than you ability to SUCCESSFULLY NAVIGATE the inevitable twists and turns of your career and be happy and successful along the way. The world is changing too fast to predict a path and stay on it. The successful engineers, scientists, and technologists, are and will be the men and women who can be flexible in their approach to their careers and to life and take advantage of what they are confronted with.

You can’t be expected to know what to do in a new situation when you haven’t been there before. But experience, knowledge, wisdom, flexibility, and state control and help you navigate your career.

That is what I am offering you here: the guidance, flexibility, knowledge, wisdom, experience, state control, and the foresight to successfully navigate your career well before you get to the place were you have to make a choice.

You certainly don’t want to get to a choice point and lack the information you need. And you certainly don’t want to learn what you need to know by trial and error.

Be well,

Steven Cerri